e you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like men!"

"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."

"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you. He's free to do as he likes.
He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"

She ran through the window, and vanished.

John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his world.
I left him there.

I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
bread and cheese. He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
some cold bacon and a pint of ale.

"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites;
"Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day. The old wumman's
puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance. Young girls are skeery critters"--he
brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe
"specially when it's in the blood of 'em. Squire Rick Voisey werr a
dandy; an' Mistress Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--rolling
the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth--"she werr a
pra-aper vixen."

Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but
he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter like
this. I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit dropped it for
a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.

I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock. I had been asleep
four hours. A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of my windows
to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk dropping into pails;
then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy footsteps.

I opened my door. Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying Pasiance
slowly up the stairs. She lay in their arms without moving, her face
whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and two or three
drops there of dried blood. Her hands were clasped, and she slowly
crooked and stiffened out her fingers. When they turned with her at the
stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All right, don't put me
down. I can bear it." They passed, and, with a half-smile in her eyes,
she said something to me that I couldn't catch; the door was shut, and
the excited whispering began again below. I waited for the men to come
out, and caught hold of Hopgood. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

"Poor young thing!" he said. "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in. The Lord 'elp her
mebbe she's not broken up much